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Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.

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Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With

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Speaker 1: text style from how stuff works dot com. Hello again, everyone,

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Speaker 1: Welcome to tex stuff. My name is Chris Poulette and

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Speaker 1: I am an editor at how stuff works dot Com.

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Speaker 1: Sitting across from me, as he always does on the

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Speaker 1: occasions on which we podcast, is senior writer Jonathan Strickland.

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Speaker 1: What we have here is a failure to communicate. Isn't

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Speaker 1: that the point of the podcast? I think some of

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Speaker 1: our podcasts have been a failure to communicate. That's true, okay,

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Speaker 1: but we've gotten better, uh in some people's eyes. So

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Speaker 1: let's tackle this topic. What are we talking about today, Chris,

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Speaker 1: We're talking about hard drives, or possibly the lack thereof,

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Speaker 1: depending on what happened to them. I got you now,

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Speaker 1: We've already done a podcast about hard drives. It actually

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Speaker 1: wasn't that long ago. But one thing we didn't really

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Speaker 1: touch on is how do you get data off a

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Speaker 1: hard drive if the hard drive has suffered some some problems,

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Speaker 1: if it has crashed in some way or another, and uh,

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Speaker 1: really to get this out of the way, depending upon

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Speaker 1: the severity of the crash, there may not be anything

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Speaker 1: you personally, as in the average customer or average user

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Speaker 1: can do to recover that data. Doesn't mean that there's

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Speaker 1: no way to get the data back. It just means that,

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Speaker 1: depending upon the severity and nature of the crash, Uh,

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Speaker 1: it's better to hand it over to a professionals. And

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Speaker 1: we'll get into why. Um, but let's go ahead and

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Speaker 1: talk about the fact that there are two major categories

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Speaker 1: of hard drive failures. There are logical failures, which I

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Speaker 1: suffer on a daily basis, not through my hard drive,

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Speaker 1: just me by myself. Um. And logical failures that's when

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Speaker 1: your hard drive suffers some sort of corruption or there's

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Speaker 1: a logical error where the computer cannot recognize the drive,

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Speaker 1: can't access the information that's on that drive. Yeah. If

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Speaker 1: you've ever had had files go corrupt on you, that's

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Speaker 1: sort of like what's going on here. Your operating system

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Speaker 1: can become corrupt and in a lot of cases it

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Speaker 1: basically well, we can get into the details of that later,

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Speaker 1: but that's that's what's going on. You can't you can't

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Speaker 1: read files on it. Yeah. Um, And this can happen

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Speaker 1: from either again, as Poletts said, like a file, a

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Speaker 1: file becomes corrupted. Uh, you could get a virus that

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Speaker 1: does this sort of thing. Um, there are a lot

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Speaker 1: of nasty malware out there that kind of does this

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Speaker 1: to your hard drive. Uh. And as a result, your

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Speaker 1: your system bios may recognize the drive, but it's not

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Speaker 1: going to boot it, and then you're gonna think, okay,

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Speaker 1: well what are my options? Uh. So that's one type

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Speaker 1: of failure. The other type of failure is a physical

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Speaker 1: failure of the drive. Now we're mainly talking about, um,

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Speaker 1: the platter based hard drives here, not the solid state.

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Speaker 1: Solid state can also suffer physical failures. Uh. Physical damage

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Speaker 1: that as a result of things like being exposed to

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Speaker 1: magnetic fields, are actually suffering physical damage. But it's a different,

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Speaker 1: different kind of damage than the platter based hard drives. Right,

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Speaker 1: just as a refresher if you didn't listen to the

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Speaker 1: hard drive podcast or have forgotten. In a typical traditional

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Speaker 1: hard drive, you've got a mechanism that is spinning platters.

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Speaker 1: And Uh, in addition to that mechanism that is spinning platters,

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Speaker 1: there is a head that is a very very very

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Speaker 1: minute distance apart from the platters. It doesn't actually touch

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Speaker 1: the platters read and write to well. No, I mean

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Speaker 1: and in a typical operating, normally operating hard drive it

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Speaker 1: is it is there to read and write information to it,

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Speaker 1: but it does not touch the platters. Now, if the

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Speaker 1: drive mechanism breaks down, if the pins the connectors that

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Speaker 1: connected to your computer break um, if the head actually

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Speaker 1: touches the platters, which is known as a head crash. Um.

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Speaker 1: If any of those things happens, you can suffer a

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Speaker 1: mechanical failure to your hard drive and your computer may

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Speaker 1: no longer be able to operate that device right. And

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Speaker 1: mechanical failures happen for many different reasons. Uh. It could

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Speaker 1: just be from physically moving a computer around and you've

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Speaker 1: jostled something loose. It could be just the fact that

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Speaker 1: you know it's mechanical. Things are moving over and over

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Speaker 1: and over, and if you have something long enough, those

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Speaker 1: parts are going to start to have wear and tear

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Speaker 1: and eventually will break. Or it could be that your

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Speaker 1: computer perhaps is generating too much heat and the heat

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Speaker 1: in turn is expanding the elements within your hard drive

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Speaker 1: and that is what's causing stuff to uh to to

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Speaker 1: not operate the way it's supposed to heat bad for

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Speaker 1: hard drive. Heat is not a good thing. And of

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Speaker 1: course they generate them because they're mechanical, yes, and then

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Speaker 1: they're you know the whole friction thing. Yeah, yeah, so

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Speaker 1: and I. In either case, you're going to have a

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Speaker 1: situation where you're not going to be able to access

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Speaker 1: the information that's stored on that hard drive. And depending

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Speaker 1: upon the severity of the problem, either with a logical

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Speaker 1: or a mechanical issue, you may or may not be

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Speaker 1: able to retrieve this data on your own. There are

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Speaker 1: a lot of different kind of do it yourself things

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Speaker 1: you can attempt, depending upon the type of problem you have.

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Speaker 1: Let's say that you have a logical problem, for example,

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Speaker 1: with your hard drive. Um, if you are fairly adept

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Speaker 1: at handling computers, you know you know the ground yourself

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Speaker 1: before you touch anything inside a computer, for example, and

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Speaker 1: that you don't feel ill at ease messing around on

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Speaker 1: the inerts of a computer. And this mainly applies to desktops.

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Speaker 1: Laptops are a lot harder to to do do it

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Speaker 1: yourself projects on just because the way they're constructed, especially

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Speaker 1: for people who are less experienced with those projects. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: some of them require special tools just to get the

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Speaker 1: case open, because they're using proprietary screws to hold them closed.

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Speaker 1: My fears always how do I get everything back in

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Speaker 1: it the way it came? YEA for those of us

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Speaker 1: who had the kind of childhood where we um took

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Speaker 1: stuff apart to see how it worked, and then realized

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Speaker 1: that when we put it back together it was never

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Speaker 1: going to work again. We get nervous when we start

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Speaker 1: opening up computers. But you may be able to remove

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Speaker 1: the hard drive, not open up the hard drive case.

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Speaker 1: Never ever ever open up the hard drive case, well

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Speaker 1: at least not if you expect it to ever work again. Right.

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Speaker 1: If you want the data that's on that hard drive,

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Speaker 1: you will not open it. I mean, okay, if you

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Speaker 1: have a clean room and you are trained to do

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Speaker 1: this kind of thing, and you're a data recovery specialist,

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Speaker 1: sure then you can open up the hard drive. But

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Speaker 1: for everybody else, do not do it right because those

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Speaker 1: platters on the on the physical hard drives, the platter

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Speaker 1: based hard drives, um, if you get any dust on that,

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Speaker 1: it can it can cause that data to to be

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Speaker 1: inaccessible forever. You don't want to get dirty. You don't

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Speaker 1: want to get scratched. You don't wanna. I mean, there

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Speaker 1: are chances that you could clean it or have someone

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Speaker 1: clean it and get that data back. But just in

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Speaker 1: the process of trying to read that that platter, you're

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Speaker 1: going to find out that you can't get the files

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Speaker 1: that you thought you were gonna be able to get

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Speaker 1: just because they got dirty, right right, Well, you know

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Speaker 1: that that's do you want to keep going with the

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Speaker 1: logical stuff with the mechanical stuff because I was I

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Speaker 1: have a good bit of information on how they they

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Speaker 1: get that information back on a mechanical drive, but I

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Speaker 1: don't want to get into that. Let's do Let's go

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Speaker 1: with mechanical first, because the mechanical, depending upon again the severity,

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Speaker 1: you may be able to do some stuff yourself. Here here,

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Speaker 1: here's something that you could potentially do with a mechanical failure.

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Speaker 1: Now that this is a mechanical failure where uh, I'll

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Speaker 1: give you three different examples. Here's one where your your

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Speaker 1: drive is spinning. Here it's spinning, but there's a clicking noise,

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Speaker 1: something is hitting against something else that's not good. Here's

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Speaker 1: something that you may have heard that you can do.

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Speaker 1: You may have heard that you could put your hard

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Speaker 1: drive in the freezer. Yes, I have heard that you

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Speaker 1: can do that. I mean, granted, obviously you can do that.

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Speaker 1: Assuming there's room in your freezer. You could do that.

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Speaker 1: And actually, the surprising thing is this can work. Uh.

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Speaker 1: Of course would have to remove it from the computer first. Yes, yes, okay,

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Speaker 1: there are some intermediate steps removing it from the computer,

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Speaker 1: putting it into a ziploc bag so that you don't

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Speaker 1: get any condensation on your hard drive, um, and then

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Speaker 1: putting it into the freezer for around twenty four hours.

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Speaker 1: The reason why this might work, this, by the way,

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Speaker 1: does not fix the drive. It's just a temporary measure

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Speaker 1: so you can get the data off the drive onto

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Speaker 1: something else. The reason why this works is because the

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Speaker 1: cold will cause the various components within the hard drive

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Speaker 1: to contract. So if it if the reason why it's

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Speaker 1: it's hitting against stuff is because something slightly out of

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Speaker 1: alignment or heating has caused things to warp a little bit.

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Speaker 1: Contracting may cause it to get close enough back to

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Speaker 1: the original positions for it to run for a short

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Speaker 1: period of time and I'm talking like half an hour max.

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Speaker 1: So with that in mind, if you've if you could

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Speaker 1: put your hard drive in the freezer, and you have

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Speaker 1: it set up so that you'r you can capture the

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Speaker 1: data that's on that hard drive, either using another computer

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Speaker 1: or your first computer with a new hard drive in it. Whatever,

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Speaker 1: you can give that a try. You can hook the

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Speaker 1: hard drive back up to a computer, boot it up

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Speaker 1: and see if it's running, and it might run fine. Um,

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Speaker 1: but it's not gonna run fine for very long because

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Speaker 1: as soon as it heats up, it's gonna start warping

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Speaker 1: again or or breaking down. So you only have a

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Speaker 1: route about, like I said, thirty minutes maybe maximum to

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Speaker 1: get the data from that hard drive onto a different

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Speaker 1: storage device. Uh. Here's something that I feel that we

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Speaker 1: should mention. What's that that? Um, when we're talking about

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Speaker 1: these home remedies, keeping in mind that you know, if

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Speaker 1: you try this, you're trying it at your own risk. Yes,

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Speaker 1: we do not recommend doing this and saying that it's

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Speaker 1: going to to fix everything and you're going to be

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Speaker 1: able to get your You will absolutely be able to

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Speaker 1: do this successfully without any problems. There's a good chance

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Speaker 1: that you may not get anything from these home remedies,

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Speaker 1: But the reason that people try them is to avoid

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Speaker 1: paying the very large fees the data recovery services charge. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: as it turns out, like because because to do data

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Speaker 1: recovery right quote unquote right to the point where you

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Speaker 1: know you're going to get you know, over the data back. Uh,

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Speaker 1: it's it's a complicated and technical process, and so it

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Speaker 1: does cost a pretty penny. Um is not an unusual

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Speaker 1: fee to see in in data recovery services. Is at

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Speaker 1: an unusual fee to see in data recovery services. But

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Speaker 1: did you want to keep going with the one more

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Speaker 1: home rent or well, kind of like you do a

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Speaker 1: combo home renmedate. Let's say that you're hard drive is

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Speaker 1: not spinning, so it won't spin up right there? There

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Speaker 1: is a a method where that you can try, if

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Speaker 1: you're brave to uh, to see if you can get

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Speaker 1: it spinning again, which is, again remove the hard drive

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Speaker 1: from your computer, and then use what I like to

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Speaker 1: call the Fawn's method. You give it a whack with

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Speaker 1: the palm of your hand a rubber mallet. Maybe you

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Speaker 1: drop it from just a few inches above the table,

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Speaker 1: and that might unstick whatever is stuck inside your hard drive.

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Speaker 1: I don't recommend it, but it is it has been

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Speaker 1: known to work. It has been known to unstick elements

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Speaker 1: that have caught together within hard drives. And again it's

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Speaker 1: another method where it's a temporary fix. You need to

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Speaker 1: get that data off a SAP. Uh So, yeah, that's

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Speaker 1: the the hit and or drop method. Those are the

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Speaker 1: three do it yourself methods for mechanical failures that I

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Speaker 1: happen to know off the top of my head. Okay, well, um,

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Speaker 1: you may be saying, okay, so a minute ago, you

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Speaker 1: you guys were talking about the data recovery services. Well,

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Speaker 1: what did they do that so special? Lets them charge

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Speaker 1: that much money for it? A lot of the data

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Speaker 1: recovery services out there, Um, when you take your drive

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Speaker 1: to them when it's busted, you know that it's a

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Speaker 1: mechanical failure going on because you hear the clicking noise,

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Speaker 1: or it won't spin up, and or you can see

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Speaker 1: that the pins have been damaged and you need to

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Speaker 1: get the information off of there, perhaps as soon as

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Speaker 1: you know right now. Um, this is where the data

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Speaker 1: recovery services shine. And there may be somebody in your

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Speaker 1: hometown or maybe somebody that you need to mail it off.

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Speaker 1: Uh two. But the thing is what they're gonna do

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Speaker 1: when you do that is they will They will probably

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Speaker 1: charge you a small fee, maybe hundred dollars, maybe even nothing.

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Speaker 1: Maybe they'll do it for free. But what they'll do

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Speaker 1: is they'll evaluate the drive to see whether or not

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Speaker 1: they can actually do anything with it. If they think

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Speaker 1: they can work with it, they'll let you know, and

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Speaker 1: they'll let you know approximately how successful they think they'll be.

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Speaker 1: And what happens is when you say, okay, yeah, go

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Speaker 1: ahead and pull all the data off of there. They're

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Speaker 1: not going to repair the drive for you. There's not

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Speaker 1: going to be a lot that they can do in

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Speaker 1: the event of a mechanical failure. Like Jonathan was saying

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Speaker 1: just a moment ago, there's there's only so long that

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Speaker 1: that drive is going to work in its current state,

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Speaker 1: if it will work at all. Um So, what they're

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Speaker 1: going to do is a very good data recovery service

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Speaker 1: is going to have what they call a Class one

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Speaker 1: clean room. Yeah, this is a room that filters the

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Speaker 1: air so that there are fewer than a hundred particulates

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Speaker 1: floating around inside that room, no bigger than half a

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Speaker 1: micron in size. We're talking a very very clean clean room.

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Speaker 1: And so you've heard us talk about clean rooms before,

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Speaker 1: because we chatted about it when we were talking about

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Speaker 1: building chips like microprocessors. The fact that you need that

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Speaker 1: because the elements on these chips are so small that

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Speaker 1: a moat of dust dwarfs them, and therefore, if it

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Speaker 1: gets on you know, some silicon when you're about to

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Speaker 1: process press press eight chip, it's going to ruin that chip. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: same sort of thing here. You know, you can't get

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Speaker 1: these things. If you want to be able to retrieve

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Speaker 1: the data from these these crashed hard drives, the platters

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Speaker 1: have to be clean, yes, And I mean if you're

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Speaker 1: trying to if if they're trying to get your data

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Speaker 1: back and you've had a head crash and their actual

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Speaker 1: gouges in the surface of the platter um adding dust

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Speaker 1: to it, it's not going to help anything. You're just

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Speaker 1: gonna make their job even even more difficult. So they're

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Speaker 1: going to take the drive apart in a clean room,

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Speaker 1: and what they're gonna do is they're going to examine

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Speaker 1: it to see what's going on. So if the drive

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Speaker 1: mechanism is bad, they're going to move the platters to

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Speaker 1: uh a mechanism that will work so that they can

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Speaker 1: get the information off of their and enshort. What they're

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Speaker 1: gonna do is they're going to retrieve the information and

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Speaker 1: you know, burn it to a disk for you so

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Speaker 1: that you can retrieve the information. Your hard drive is shot,

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Speaker 1: but um, it sort of depends on what's going on

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Speaker 1: with it now. Jonathan was also talking about getting stuff

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Speaker 1: on it. If your drive has been submerged in water

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Speaker 1: or you know, caught in a fire. Say you're your

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Speaker 1: fan stopped working in your desktop computer and it started

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Speaker 1: a small fire. You put it out, but your hard

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Speaker 1: drive got caught in there. Maybe it's only suffered you know,

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Speaker 1: a little smoke damage, but you still can't use it.

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Speaker 1: They're going to have to take the platters out and

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Speaker 1: clean them very carefully with the with the solution that

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Speaker 1: they use for that kind of thing, something that's not

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Speaker 1: going to affect the readA or right ability of the

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Speaker 1: platter I guess, and put it in a mechanism again

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Speaker 1: that that will work. Uh, and do that now. And

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Speaker 1: when we say mechanism a lot of these hard drives,

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Speaker 1: what you have to do is have an identical working

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Speaker 1: hard drive. Because hard drives come in different shapes and sizes,

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Speaker 1: they come in differently. You know it's and it's just

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Speaker 1: one of those things where it's not like they have

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Speaker 1: a universal device and you put a platter in there

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Speaker 1: and it's gonna work perfectly. That's another reason why it's

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Speaker 1: so expensive for these for these businesses to work properly,

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Speaker 1: they need to have spare parts from lots and lots

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Speaker 1: of different uh hard drives. Um. One of the other

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Speaker 1: kind of physical failures, which you know, I didn't really

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Speaker 1: chat about because again I was focusing on the do

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Speaker 1: it yourself, and this is really not to do it yourself,

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Speaker 1: is an electronic failure where the circuit board beneath your

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Speaker 1: hard drive, the thing that connects the connecting point between

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Speaker 1: your hard drive and your actual computer, the physical connecting

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Speaker 1: point that can have a problem, that can suffer a failure,

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Speaker 1: in which case you really need someone else to fix it,

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Speaker 1: like to give you an identical circuit board and connect

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Speaker 1: it all together properly for to to come back, and

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Speaker 1: you may not even be able to do that. That

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Speaker 1: computer might be shot or you may have to rebuild

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Speaker 1: from that that point on, in which case data recovery

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Speaker 1: is really your only, your only option to get that

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Speaker 1: information back anyway. You're not gonna you know, it's not

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Speaker 1: necessarily repair thing, it's a recovery. So uh. Again, if

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Speaker 1: you take it to a data recovery specialists, they're going

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Speaker 1: to have to have those parts in stock to be

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Speaker 1: able to to do anything, because again it's not a

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Speaker 1: one size fits all sort of model. Everything's proprietary. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: The most the most serious problem that you could have

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Speaker 1: as a mechanical failure, I would say, is when there's

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Speaker 1: actual physical damage to the platters themselves, the likelihood of

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Speaker 1: getting information back off of that that disk is less

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Speaker 1: than a lot. It depends on It depends on a

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Speaker 1: lot of different factors, how bad the gouges are and

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Speaker 1: where they are on the disc, and how good your

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Speaker 1: data recovery specialist is. There's some data recovery specialists out

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Speaker 1: there who have men age to retrieve data from hard

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Speaker 1: drives that I would have sworn were beyond the ability

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Speaker 1: to to salvage UM. And you actually had a really

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Speaker 1: good example of that. You send it to me about

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Speaker 1: the uh, the hard drive recovered from a Space shuttle. Yes,

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Speaker 1: the Space Shuttle Columbia, which, as many of you will remember,

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Speaker 1: UM had a a problem that caused it to burn

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Speaker 1: up on re entry and it broke apart, of course,

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Speaker 1: killing me the astronauts on board unfortunately, and UM, of course,

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Speaker 1: a lot of the parts were recovered. A lot of

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Speaker 1: the pieces of the shuttle were recovered, including at least

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Speaker 1: three of the hard drives, and UM NASA sent those

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Speaker 1: UH to one of the giants in the industry and

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Speaker 1: all on track UM to have them recovered. Now, two

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Speaker 1: of the drives that that were mentioned in this MSNBC

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Speaker 1: article UM they had a whole media section with lots

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Speaker 1: and lots of articles about what they do UM, as

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Speaker 1: as many good marketers will do UM. But they had

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Speaker 1: an the article on MSNBC U it was really fascinating

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Speaker 1: because two of their hard drives were burned so badly

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Speaker 1: that they really couldn't do much with it. Another one, however,

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Speaker 1: UM had suffered a had suffered damage to the platters,

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Speaker 1: but they were able to clean the platters off and

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Speaker 1: get the information, not because UM, you know, the gouges

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Speaker 1: weren't significant, but because the data had stopped writing short

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Speaker 1: of where the gouges were, so that the data was

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Speaker 1: intact up to the point where the gauges started. The

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Speaker 1: undamaged part of the platter. It was the part that

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Speaker 1: actually had data written to it was the damaged part.

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Speaker 1: No data had been written to that section yet. And

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Speaker 1: you may remember in our hard drive podcast we talked

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Speaker 1: about how when you write information to a hard drive,

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Speaker 1: it doesn't necessarily do it sequentially on the platter itself.

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Speaker 1: So you're trying to you're not necessarily gonna have two

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Speaker 1: sectors next to each other containing one really big file. Well,

364
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Speaker 1: in that particular instance, you did because they were using sauce,

365
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Speaker 1: which has a different way. I mean, it actually stored

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Speaker 1: data sequentially on the hard drive, so it wasn't saved.

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Speaker 1: Willy nilly, I'm sorry, I keep talking. Every keep just interrupting.

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Speaker 1: You keep going, please, um no, No. That That's the

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Speaker 1: thing about about that is that in this case they

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Speaker 1: were the drive recovery specialists who were able to save

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Speaker 1: information that the scientists said can had conducted while they

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Speaker 1: were out in space. So that was a very very

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Speaker 1: positive outcome for that particular instance. But unfortunately, the other

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Speaker 1: two drives were damaged beyond repair, and that you know,

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00:20:36,880 --> 00:20:39,359
Speaker 1: is certainly not unheard of even for the best of

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Speaker 1: the best. Right, Yeah, if the if the platters have

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Speaker 1: suffered real severe damage, then there may be nothing you

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Speaker 1: can do. Um, you mentioned flooding. I was gonna point this.

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Speaker 1: This is not really a do it yourself but this

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Speaker 1: is one of those things that it's good to know

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Speaker 1: in case you ever are in a situation where, uh,

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Speaker 1: you have a hard drive that's been submerged in water,

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00:20:59,800 --> 00:21:01,800
Speaker 1: but for you take it to a specialist, you may

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Speaker 1: want to continue to have it submerged in water. Really yeah,

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00:21:05,680 --> 00:21:09,840
Speaker 1: here's the reason why. Uh. When the water gets into

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Speaker 1: the hard drive, it can be caring, carrying lots of

387
00:21:12,680 --> 00:21:17,200
Speaker 1: particulate matter along with the water. When that hard drive

388
00:21:17,400 --> 00:21:20,800
Speaker 1: dries out, that particulate matter can adhere to the platters

389
00:21:20,800 --> 00:21:23,479
Speaker 1: on your hard drive. I see. So that can make

390
00:21:23,520 --> 00:21:26,000
Speaker 1: it more difficult to clean the hard drive and makes

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Speaker 1: it less likely that you're going to get all your

392
00:21:27,720 --> 00:21:31,000
Speaker 1: data back. Um, if you submerge the hard drive in water,

393
00:21:31,160 --> 00:21:35,520
Speaker 1: that can keep the particulates uh kind of suspended in

394
00:21:35,600 --> 00:21:38,480
Speaker 1: the solution of the water, and you can take it

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00:21:38,520 --> 00:21:41,040
Speaker 1: to the recovery specialists who can then in a very

396
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Speaker 1: controlled manner, remove the hard drive, dry it out, and

397
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Speaker 1: clean it so that it's these little particulates don't get

398
00:21:48,560 --> 00:21:50,800
Speaker 1: stuck to the platters. So what you're saying is if

399
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Speaker 1: it's if it's still submerged in water, keep it still

400
00:21:53,440 --> 00:21:56,560
Speaker 1: submerged in water. Yeah, yeah, because I would assume that

401
00:21:56,640 --> 00:21:58,640
Speaker 1: if it had been you know, if you had had

402
00:21:58,680 --> 00:22:01,080
Speaker 1: a flood in your house and you would evacuated, the

403
00:22:01,119 --> 00:22:04,040
Speaker 1: water was gone, everything was dry ish. Yeah, if you

404
00:22:04,119 --> 00:22:07,000
Speaker 1: come you're probably the damage is probably if you come

405
00:22:07,000 --> 00:22:08,959
Speaker 1: back and it's and it's already been dried out, then

406
00:22:09,000 --> 00:22:11,200
Speaker 1: there's not really any point and you submerging it again

407
00:22:12,200 --> 00:22:16,040
Speaker 1: because if it's those particulars have adhered to the platter,

408
00:22:16,320 --> 00:22:19,720
Speaker 1: there's very little likelihood that they're going to to detach

409
00:22:19,880 --> 00:22:22,720
Speaker 1: once you submerge it back in water. So no need

410
00:22:22,760 --> 00:22:25,679
Speaker 1: to to go to that step. But if it is

411
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Speaker 1: submerged in water, you may as well continue to do that.

412
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Speaker 1: You know, it's again anytime there's gonna be water and electronics,

413
00:22:32,280 --> 00:22:35,080
Speaker 1: you have to be really careful. There's always the danger

414
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Speaker 1: of electrocution. But you know, assuming you're able to get

415
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Speaker 1: the hard drive out safely, uh, it is not a

416
00:22:43,000 --> 00:22:45,720
Speaker 1: bad idea to go ahead and keep it submerged in

417
00:22:45,800 --> 00:22:48,040
Speaker 1: water until you can get it to a recovery specialist.

418
00:22:48,520 --> 00:22:52,280
Speaker 1: The damage has already done. Really yeah. Yeah, Now, a

419
00:22:52,359 --> 00:22:55,040
Speaker 1: data recovery specialists can also help you with a logical

420
00:22:55,359 --> 00:22:58,200
Speaker 1: hard drive failure, although they may not need to. There

421
00:22:58,240 --> 00:23:00,880
Speaker 1: may be some things that you can do yourself. Right, So,

422
00:23:01,080 --> 00:23:03,960
Speaker 1: if you've got a corrupted file system or you've got

423
00:23:03,960 --> 00:23:07,600
Speaker 1: a virus on that hard drive, uh, sometimes you can

424
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Speaker 1: remove that hard drive from your computer, put it in

425
00:23:12,040 --> 00:23:15,400
Speaker 1: say an external case, and connect it to a working computer.

426
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Speaker 1: If you have the right software, you may be able

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Speaker 1: to scan that hard drive and be able to without

428
00:23:20,680 --> 00:23:22,800
Speaker 1: going into any further detail, you might be able to

429
00:23:22,840 --> 00:23:25,520
Speaker 1: just pull the data directly off of it and put

430
00:23:25,560 --> 00:23:30,640
Speaker 1: it onto another storage system. Uh. That's the best case scenario. Really. Yeah,

431
00:23:30,680 --> 00:23:33,000
Speaker 1: you might also might be able to. Uh. It's also

432
00:23:33,119 --> 00:23:36,040
Speaker 1: not a bad idea to keep an emergency boot c

433
00:23:36,200 --> 00:23:39,720
Speaker 1: D around too, which would would help you with that too,

434
00:23:39,760 --> 00:23:42,920
Speaker 1: because if you have UM one of the major anti

435
00:23:43,000 --> 00:23:49,480
Speaker 1: virus UH utilities and those types of the computer utilities discs,

436
00:23:49,720 --> 00:23:52,560
Speaker 1: they'll let you burn a CD ROM or DVD. I

437
00:23:52,600 --> 00:23:56,600
Speaker 1: guess that would allow you to boot up your computer

438
00:23:56,880 --> 00:24:00,200
Speaker 1: and it would run off of the disk, allowing to

439
00:24:01,160 --> 00:24:03,359
Speaker 1: scan your hard drive and make sure that it isn't

440
00:24:03,680 --> 00:24:06,200
Speaker 1: in any way corrupted or that it's got a virus.

441
00:24:06,240 --> 00:24:09,000
Speaker 1: They may be able to fix it that way. But um,

442
00:24:09,080 --> 00:24:11,640
Speaker 1: you know, in generals, a lot of the problems that

443
00:24:11,800 --> 00:24:15,280
Speaker 1: come from this is uh, from the pointers that go

444
00:24:15,400 --> 00:24:17,159
Speaker 1: to the files. I mean, that's what happens. When you

445
00:24:17,160 --> 00:24:20,200
Speaker 1: delete something, You're you're basically racing the pointers to the file,

446
00:24:20,800 --> 00:24:24,639
Speaker 1: and that allows the sector to be rewritten, you know,

447
00:24:24,640 --> 00:24:26,720
Speaker 1: when you do something else. But if the file hasn't

448
00:24:26,720 --> 00:24:29,560
Speaker 1: been written over and the pointers are missing, those can

449
00:24:29,600 --> 00:24:32,520
Speaker 1: be re established. Right. Yeah, that's a good point. Um,

450
00:24:32,560 --> 00:24:35,359
Speaker 1: when you delete something from a hard drive, it's not

451
00:24:35,480 --> 00:24:39,600
Speaker 1: really gone yet, right. Um. It's essentially when you delete

452
00:24:39,600 --> 00:24:41,560
Speaker 1: something from your hard drive, you're essentially giving your computer

453
00:24:41,760 --> 00:24:45,040
Speaker 1: a direction saying this data is no longer important to me,

454
00:24:45,160 --> 00:24:47,959
Speaker 1: so the next time I am writing data, this space

455
00:24:48,160 --> 00:24:52,440
Speaker 1: is available to be written over. Um. It's so there's

456
00:24:52,480 --> 00:24:54,679
Speaker 1: even a chance if you've deleted something, if you haven't

457
00:24:55,000 --> 00:24:57,960
Speaker 1: written anything new to the hard drive, there's a good

458
00:24:58,480 --> 00:25:01,600
Speaker 1: you can recover that. Saying there's a chance, I mean

459
00:25:01,640 --> 00:25:04,760
Speaker 1: you can recover that. But if you've started to write

460
00:25:04,760 --> 00:25:06,480
Speaker 1: stuff to the hard drive again, like you've saved a

461
00:25:06,520 --> 00:25:09,480
Speaker 1: new program to the hard drive, there's a chance that

462
00:25:09,800 --> 00:25:12,439
Speaker 1: the sectors that contained the data from that file you

463
00:25:12,520 --> 00:25:15,560
Speaker 1: accidentally deleted were some of the sectors that they got

464
00:25:16,800 --> 00:25:21,720
Speaker 1: written to. So UH, that's one thing I wanted to

465
00:25:21,720 --> 00:25:23,840
Speaker 1: to mention too. We were talking about the software that

466
00:25:23,840 --> 00:25:27,439
Speaker 1: allows you to scan uh your hard drive to to

467
00:25:27,480 --> 00:25:33,399
Speaker 1: correct any file corruption or to try and find files. UM.

468
00:25:33,440 --> 00:25:39,159
Speaker 1: This software can be pretty expensive. Again, like is not

469
00:25:39,240 --> 00:25:41,679
Speaker 1: unusual for the kind of software that that does a

470
00:25:41,720 --> 00:25:45,760
Speaker 1: pretty good job at uh at looking for files on

471
00:25:45,800 --> 00:25:50,760
Speaker 1: a corrupt logic problem on a hard drive. And and

472
00:25:51,320 --> 00:25:55,359
Speaker 1: they're specific to different operating systems. So you know, the

473
00:25:55,440 --> 00:25:59,119
Speaker 1: Windows operating system, the Linux, the mac os all have

474
00:25:59,280 --> 00:26:03,240
Speaker 1: different UM software for those and at different price points.

475
00:26:04,240 --> 00:26:08,800
Speaker 1: You want to be careful when you choose a recovery

476
00:26:08,840 --> 00:26:13,560
Speaker 1: software package because if you if that recovery software package

477
00:26:13,600 --> 00:26:16,480
Speaker 1: in turn rights to the hard drive as a part

478
00:26:16,600 --> 00:26:19,840
Speaker 1: of trying to scan it, uh, that means you could

479
00:26:19,920 --> 00:26:24,119
Speaker 1: lose data because it's writing over something that's already there.

480
00:26:24,200 --> 00:26:26,720
Speaker 1: Once you write over it it, I'm not gonna say

481
00:26:26,760 --> 00:26:30,439
Speaker 1: it's impossible, because lord knows, I'm not gonna say it's

482
00:26:30,440 --> 00:26:33,840
Speaker 1: impossible to get the data back if you overwrite it. Uh.

483
00:26:33,960 --> 00:26:37,280
Speaker 1: Because every single time someone says that something pops up

484
00:26:37,280 --> 00:26:39,320
Speaker 1: where it becomes an exception to the rule, but it

485
00:26:39,520 --> 00:26:44,280
Speaker 1: is immeasurably more difficult to get that data back right.

486
00:26:45,200 --> 00:26:47,080
Speaker 1: And that's something to keep in mind too. If you're

487
00:26:47,080 --> 00:26:50,560
Speaker 1: intentionally trying to delete stuff thinking that the cops will

488
00:26:50,560 --> 00:26:53,400
Speaker 1: never find it, yeah, they might be able to because

489
00:26:53,400 --> 00:26:56,560
Speaker 1: it drive recovery specialist can probably get it back. You

490
00:26:56,600 --> 00:27:00,280
Speaker 1: pretty much have to delete everything right over every thing

491
00:27:00,359 --> 00:27:02,639
Speaker 1: deleted again, right over it again. I mean, they're there

492
00:27:02,680 --> 00:27:06,879
Speaker 1: are people who are experts at getting rid of data

493
00:27:07,359 --> 00:27:10,720
Speaker 1: where you're doing it electronically and you're not just determined

494
00:27:10,760 --> 00:27:12,520
Speaker 1: to destroy the hard drive because you can always do

495
00:27:12,560 --> 00:27:15,320
Speaker 1: that well, they said. Even the information I got when

496
00:27:15,359 --> 00:27:18,800
Speaker 1: I was doing research suggested that even you know, taking

497
00:27:18,800 --> 00:27:22,920
Speaker 1: a pair of pliers to a platter may not damage

498
00:27:23,000 --> 00:27:25,800
Speaker 1: all of it, I mean, which is why magnet would help.

499
00:27:25,840 --> 00:27:27,719
Speaker 1: There was that one if you're trying to destroy it,

500
00:27:27,800 --> 00:27:30,400
Speaker 1: there was that one company that we saw. I don't

501
00:27:30,440 --> 00:27:31,679
Speaker 1: know if you were, I don't know if this was

502
00:27:31,680 --> 00:27:33,600
Speaker 1: one of the years that you went, but at CES

503
00:27:34,000 --> 00:27:38,160
Speaker 1: there was a company that specifically specialized in destroying hard

504
00:27:38,240 --> 00:27:41,720
Speaker 1: drives so that the data was not recoverable. Um and

505
00:27:41,760 --> 00:27:43,480
Speaker 1: they had a couple of different methods, and one of

506
00:27:43,520 --> 00:27:46,640
Speaker 1: them was that it would just punch an enormous hole

507
00:27:46,800 --> 00:27:51,399
Speaker 1: through the entire hard drive using a essentially an industrial

508
00:27:51,440 --> 00:27:54,160
Speaker 1: sized drill press kind of thing. Even then you might

509
00:27:54,200 --> 00:27:55,600
Speaker 1: be able to find it. But there was another one

510
00:27:55,600 --> 00:27:58,679
Speaker 1: that would tread the platters. Yeah, that one pretty much

511
00:27:58,720 --> 00:28:00,720
Speaker 1: do it. That does it. Yeah, you're it's gonna be

512
00:28:00,840 --> 00:28:05,520
Speaker 1: really hard to get any information out of a shredded platter, Yeah,

513
00:28:05,840 --> 00:28:09,879
Speaker 1: I wine, so yeah. If it's a if it's a

514
00:28:09,920 --> 00:28:12,760
Speaker 1: logic problem, usually there's some sort of software that you

515
00:28:12,800 --> 00:28:17,880
Speaker 1: can use to attempt to get at that data. Occasionally,

516
00:28:18,320 --> 00:28:20,359
Speaker 1: the problem is going to be so specific or so

517
00:28:20,480 --> 00:28:24,240
Speaker 1: unusual that that unless you have exactly the right program,

518
00:28:24,240 --> 00:28:25,920
Speaker 1: you're not going to be able to do it yourself.

519
00:28:26,240 --> 00:28:30,320
Speaker 1: And again you may have to take that into a

520
00:28:30,400 --> 00:28:34,879
Speaker 1: data recovery specialist who will use their own software to

521
00:28:35,080 --> 00:28:38,040
Speaker 1: scan and image your hard drive and then dump all

522
00:28:38,080 --> 00:28:40,080
Speaker 1: the stuff. You should also know that if you're using

523
00:28:40,120 --> 00:28:43,280
Speaker 1: the these um software packages, a lot of them, when

524
00:28:43,280 --> 00:28:45,920
Speaker 1: they pull data off of your hard drive, are going

525
00:28:46,000 --> 00:28:50,160
Speaker 1: to organize your data in big lumps so that it's

526
00:28:50,200 --> 00:28:52,840
Speaker 1: not gonna be in the nice little file tree system

527
00:28:52,880 --> 00:28:55,040
Speaker 1: that you had set up back when it was your

528
00:28:55,080 --> 00:28:57,760
Speaker 1: hard drive and everything was hunky dory. Right, You're likely

529
00:28:57,800 --> 00:28:59,640
Speaker 1: to get a list of files. Right. You might get

530
00:28:59,680 --> 00:29:02,000
Speaker 1: a full or that has all image files in it,

531
00:29:02,520 --> 00:29:04,160
Speaker 1: which means that you're going to get a folder that

532
00:29:04,200 --> 00:29:06,400
Speaker 1: has all the pictures you've taken and things like that,

533
00:29:06,480 --> 00:29:10,120
Speaker 1: plus all the little image files from every single program

534
00:29:10,200 --> 00:29:12,880
Speaker 1: you have on there. So it's all in a huge

535
00:29:13,560 --> 00:29:17,320
Speaker 1: disorganized lump. Uh, the same thing like all the all

536
00:29:17,320 --> 00:29:21,200
Speaker 1: the document files will be together, you know, all anything

537
00:29:21,240 --> 00:29:25,720
Speaker 1: that's a specific file type might be lumped together into

538
00:29:25,760 --> 00:29:30,000
Speaker 1: a single folder, which, uh, that's really You're not necessarily

539
00:29:30,040 --> 00:29:31,640
Speaker 1: gonna be able to use all the programs that you

540
00:29:31,720 --> 00:29:34,480
Speaker 1: had before, but at least you'll be able to access

541
00:29:34,800 --> 00:29:39,080
Speaker 1: certain you know, whatever files are at least easily findable

542
00:29:39,640 --> 00:29:41,880
Speaker 1: in there, right, right, And I mean if it's something

543
00:29:41,880 --> 00:29:47,280
Speaker 1: that's that's truly important, especially for business reasons, Um, you know,

544
00:29:47,400 --> 00:29:50,040
Speaker 1: they're they're just some things that you're gonna want to

545
00:29:50,080 --> 00:29:53,680
Speaker 1: save period, you know, family photos there. You know, these

546
00:29:53,680 --> 00:29:57,080
Speaker 1: things can't be replaced. So and uh, this is a

547
00:29:57,080 --> 00:29:59,520
Speaker 1: good time for another reminder. Back up your hard drive

548
00:30:00,040 --> 00:30:02,760
Speaker 1: always a good idea. Yeah, always. We We say it

549
00:30:02,840 --> 00:30:04,600
Speaker 1: every single time we talk about any kind of hard

550
00:30:04,680 --> 00:30:09,760
Speaker 1: drive issue. Back up your data, because things do go wrong.

551
00:30:09,960 --> 00:30:12,720
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's even if you're doing everything right,

552
00:30:13,560 --> 00:30:16,280
Speaker 1: Systems can break down. Systems do breakdown. It's kind of

553
00:30:16,320 --> 00:30:18,240
Speaker 1: this whole in tropic thing that we have going on

554
00:30:18,280 --> 00:30:22,720
Speaker 1: in the universe. So you need to take precautions against it,

555
00:30:23,120 --> 00:30:27,080
Speaker 1: and you know, treat your backup systems really well too,

556
00:30:27,120 --> 00:30:30,960
Speaker 1: because backup systems could fail as well. I'm not saying

557
00:30:31,000 --> 00:30:33,600
Speaker 1: that you have to make endless backups of your data,

558
00:30:33,640 --> 00:30:35,880
Speaker 1: but always make sure you have at least one viable

559
00:30:35,960 --> 00:30:39,520
Speaker 1: one sitting around. Not a bad idea. Yeah, and uh,

560
00:30:39,680 --> 00:30:41,959
Speaker 1: you know that might even involve saving to the cloud,

561
00:30:42,040 --> 00:30:44,760
Speaker 1: because a nice thing about most cloud systems is a

562
00:30:44,760 --> 00:30:47,800
Speaker 1: lot of them have built in redundancy, So the data

563
00:30:47,840 --> 00:30:49,840
Speaker 1: that you save to the cloud ends up being stored

564
00:30:49,880 --> 00:30:53,440
Speaker 1: on multiple machines because, just like any other machine, those

565
00:30:53,480 --> 00:30:57,320
Speaker 1: servers can break down too. That's true. Well I think

566
00:30:57,360 --> 00:31:00,160
Speaker 1: that did you? Did you have anything else to add? No?

567
00:31:00,280 --> 00:31:02,720
Speaker 1: Not really, I think we we pretty much got into

568
00:31:02,760 --> 00:31:05,480
Speaker 1: most of it. Cool. So yeah, I hope all of

569
00:31:05,480 --> 00:31:09,000
Speaker 1: you listeners out there never suffer a hard drive crash

570
00:31:09,160 --> 00:31:11,720
Speaker 1: on the level that we're talking about here. Hopefully what

571
00:31:11,800 --> 00:31:14,840
Speaker 1: will happen is you're all really really happy and wealthy,

572
00:31:15,000 --> 00:31:17,160
Speaker 1: and then every time you get bored of a computer,

573
00:31:17,240 --> 00:31:18,920
Speaker 1: you just go out and buy a new one, and

574
00:31:18,960 --> 00:31:20,720
Speaker 1: that way you never have to worry about our drives

575
00:31:20,720 --> 00:31:23,440
Speaker 1: getting old because you don't keep them long enough. And uh,

576
00:31:23,520 --> 00:31:25,960
Speaker 1: if you have all this cash, why haven't you bought

577
00:31:26,040 --> 00:31:32,040
Speaker 1: us presence? That was a joke by corporate by corporate policy.

578
00:31:32,120 --> 00:31:35,080
Speaker 1: I cannot accept any presence other than cookies because those

579
00:31:35,120 --> 00:31:40,840
Speaker 1: were awesome. Yeah, So, if any of you have any questions, comments,

580
00:31:41,040 --> 00:31:43,920
Speaker 1: you have a topic you want to suggest, you can

581
00:31:43,960 --> 00:31:46,760
Speaker 1: write us. Our email address is tech stuff at how

582
00:31:46,840 --> 00:31:48,800
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com and Chris and I will talk

583
00:31:48,800 --> 00:31:55,400
Speaker 1: to you again really soon if you're a tech stuff

584
00:31:55,480 --> 00:31:58,160
Speaker 1: and be sure to check us out on Twitter text

585
00:31:58,200 --> 00:32:01,239
Speaker 1: stuff hs wsr hand and you can also find us

586
00:32:01,280 --> 00:32:04,560
Speaker 1: on Facebook at Facebook dot com slash tech Stuff h

587
00:32:04,680 --> 00:32:08,760
Speaker 1: s W. For more on this and thousands of other topics,

588
00:32:08,920 --> 00:32:11,360
Speaker 1: visit how stuff works dot com and be sure to

589
00:32:11,440 --> 00:32:13,480
Speaker 1: check out the new tech stuff blog now on the

590
00:32:13,520 --> 00:32:20,959
Speaker 1: house stuff Works homepage. Brought to you by the Reinvented

591
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Speaker 1: two thousand twelve camera. It's ready. Are you